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Charles Rangel and Alan Colmes Debunk Bush On The Iraq War

By News Hounds

For those who think Democrats can't do well on FOX News, check out how Congressman Charles Rangel, on Hannity & Colmes no less, managed to drive home his point that Bush planned to attack Iraq before 9/11. Democrats should study how he was able to turn around Hannity's "questions" and use them for his own talking points. He was never intimidated by Hannity and he never got angry.

Sean Hannity opened the discussion with this "fair and balanced" question: President Bush promised that the United States would stay the course in bringing freedom to the people of Iraq but some Democrats are advocating for the troops to come home now before the job is done... It's very predictable from the Democratic party. I have heard the president called a liar repeatedly by the leaders of your party... Howard Dean says Republicans are evil, brain-dead corrupt... so we should, I guess, anticipate that your Democratic friends didn't like the speech tonight? (Comment: I think we can anticipate that Sean Hannity didn't like the speech tonight, either, because he said very little about it.)

CR - Without getting angry: I'm not saying it's a Democratic thing and I think it's shameful when we have the troops there to be talking like Democrats and Republicans. I join with the president in supporting the brave men and women there but I'm surprised why he would go back half a dozen times to 9/11 when we know that America would never have supported the loss of 1700 men and women, 12,000 that are disabled as a result of the war and tens of thousands Iraqis dead. This was supposed to be based on Saddam Hussein being involved one way or the other with 9/11. We don't find weapons of mass destruction, no connection with Al Qaeda.

Hannity, interrupting and once again changing the subject when he's in trouble, said that Bill Clinton, one of Rangel's "closest friends" said Saddam had biological, chemical and nuclear capability. (Comment: Why is that everything Bill Clinton did was wrong, yet Republicans are always using his actions as an excuse for Bush's?) "Yet you don't give George Bush the same slack because you and your fellow Democrats are playing politics and just want to call George Bush a liar again. Isn't that true?'

CR: That's a shameful thing to say when our men and women are over there dying every day. You know that if we knew what we knew today - that he already intended to knock off Saddam Hussein before 9/11...

CR: ...I am telling you that the country is beginning to know that long before 9/11 President Bush wanted to knock off Saddam Hussein. You know it and I know it.

Next, it was Alan Colmes' turn with the discussion. He quickly expanded upon Rangel's points and even brought up the Downing Street Memo.

Colmes: By the way, there's a report in the British press over the last couple of days that we doubled bombing runs in the runup to the war. They tried to provoke Saddam Hussein prior to the actual beginning of the war. We have the Downing Street Memo. None of this, of course, was addressed tonight. We get the same old tired rhetoric. No new information. No new rationale.

CR: When we went over there, Rumsfeld said it would take two or three days or a week or so. Now they're talking about 12 years. The president has to understand, when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. You gotta level with the American people and we'll come together and get our allies to come and try to help Iraqis to try to do something for their country...

AC: I think we saw tonight why 53% of the American people according to a recent poll disapprove of the president's performance, why 52% say the administration - that's more than half - deliberately misled the American people. I don't know that anything was said or done tonight to correct that perception on the part of the American people.

CR: Not at all. Not at all... Most people thought that it involved 9/11. And Sean, you keep talking about Kerry. (Did he mean Dean?) Kerry's not the commander-in-chief... We expect more from our president... He should have said, 'Listen, some mistakes were made. We had bad intelligence but we got rid of a bad guy. Now it's time for us to go to Europe and go to the rest of the world that organizes and trains these people and tell them that we're not gonna stay there for 12 years.

SH (sarcastically): Hey, Congressman Rangel, we'd like to thank you for the conspiracy theory portion of the program.

CR: I didn't say conspiracy. Conspiracy is what you said. I'm saying the president wanted to knock off Saddam Hussein before 9/11.

Comment viewing options

Rep. Charles Rangel did an excellent job deflecting the sarcastic right-wing pandering of Sean Hannity. It illustrates very well that without sarcasm and appeals to tribal loyalty, the right-wing has no message.

I agree!
We have a president that went to war,just because he wanted to.
That is definately a impeachable offense,and he can be charged with being a war criminal.
So just because the gop has the majority,does that mean that the American people have to stand back and let a president go unchecked.
I don't think so,this president statrted a war on a LIE.
And in my life time theres never been a president that's did more wrong,he needs to be brought up on war criminal charges in the US and world.
Good Job Charles Rangel.

Just because your the majority doesn't mean you can get away with treason.
I think the Constitution reads,for the people, by the people.
I read some where that the gop gets to vote on whether the Downing St.Menos are even investigated.
Isn't that like letting the bank robbers decide there fate.
This is still America and just because your the president,doesn't entitle you to LIE.
And this Lie has costed many lives and disfigurments.

The Big Medias are all working for Bush,and there the reason were in this mess.As a life time long Republican,I would never have voted in 2000,for a Cocane addicted,alcoholic,AWOL and a failure.
Combined with a corporate crook,Dick Cheney.
Not to forget there pipe dream,PNAC.
Its to friggen bad the Republicans didn't here about ther wet dream,PNAC.
This is a cult and makes me very angry that I voted in 2000 for this moron.
Signing off,I didn't make the same mistake in 2004!

You are so right. The right wing has no message except that we are "spreading democracy", or was it that we are "going to disarm Iraq", oh wait a minute, it must be "WMD", oh wait, there are no WMD's, oh that's right, "regime change". The right gets fed a one liner from some clone like Rush Limbaugh, and then takes it as truth wihtout doing their own due diligence, and then spouts it off like they are so smart. I just saw on CNN this morning a Republican defending Bush by saying "do you want to fight terrorists over there or over here", and when the Democrat said, "there were no terrorists in Iraq before we invaded", what did the Republican say? "Do you want to fight terrorists over here or over there?" They just try to make sane people crazy with circular aguments.

On point however, Thanks to Charles Rangel, and I'm sorry I missed him getting all over Sean Hannity. I can't stomach FOX news.

It would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic! Everyone I knew said that Bush was going after Saddam but idiots like Hannity call it a conspiracy theory? The DSM even points out that Bush needed to "depersonalise" the rationale for engaging Iraq in military combat because it would come off looking like he had a vendetta. He DID have a vendetta and he did whatever he could to rationalize removing Saddam from power and he did it illegally. I'm fortunate my son came home from Iraq after (2) tours of duty--over 1,700 haven't. Tell them this mess in Iraq is just a conspiracy theory Hannity.

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